


Five Ways Nikandros Taught Laurent Wrestling

by Josselin



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Wrestling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 06:17:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9422192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin
Summary: Five ways Nikandros taught Laurent wrestling.





	1. Chapter 1

Nikandros had thought to use the royal practice ring for his own exercise, but as he approached he could tell it was already in use. It was a solo practitioner. He could hear footsteps, but no clash of weapons against each other, no words from one fighter to another.

He had a moment where he thought—it must be Damen—and he fought a moment of terror and fury where he thought that the fool had truly gone from being just able to sit up in bed and sip some broth to attempting to work out in the ring in the same day. Damen also had a habit of working out by himself, particularly when he was troubled by something and needed time to think. But this wasn’t Damen. Paschal would not have let Damen out of bed, and the footsteps were too light, too close together.

Nikandros’s mind arrived at the answer at the same moment his footsteps arrived in the doorway. He looked into the ring and watched the Veretian Prince for a few moments. It wasn’t possible to fully evaluate a man’s swordwork simply watching him practice by himself, but there was plenty to observe nonetheless. The Prince held his sword well, he moved quickly and his steps were sure. Nikandros was uncertain how long he had been practicing. There were streaks of sweat through his hair, which indicated that it perhaps had been some time, but the Prince’s breathing was even.

Nikandros watched his footwork on another pass, comparing what he saw to his previous observations of Laurent and to what Damen had told him about the Prince’s skills. Nikandros would have presumed, upon first meeting the Prince—or not meeting him, when he failed to appear with reinforcements at Charcy and instead appeared perfectly coiffed afterwards—that the Prince had no athletic ability. Damen had said otherwise, and Nikandros had took it as yet another sign of his infatuation. 

When Nikandros had challenged Laurent to a duel, after he’d seen what Laurent had done to Damen, he had assumed that the match would be uneven. The Prince might try a trick, Nikandros had supposed, but he did not think that Prince would pose any sort of challenge on the field. 

The okton had shown that the Prince was clearly a much better athlete than Nikandros had supposed. And so when Damen had murmured to Nikandros, in the chaos of the physicians after Kastor had been killed and Damen had been wounded, that it had actually been Laurent who had killed Kastor, Nikandros had looked at the carnage of that scene and reformed his perspective of Laurent again. 

Laurent had spotted Nikandros in the doorway, and he lowered his sword slowly to the floor. “Kyros,” he said.

“Your highness,” said Nikandros. 

“Has something happened?”

“No,” said Nikandros. “I simply thought to take advantage of an empty ring, and did not realize you had the same notion.”

Laurent nodded. “It’s good that you are here. I could use a real opponent.”

Nikandros hesitated, still in the doorway. 

“Frightened?” said Laurent.

“Damianos has forbidden me from dueling you,” said Nikandros evenly. “And you did just kill our previous king, so it seems ill advised.”

“If I kill you then I would have to do everything myself,” said Laurent, “because this entire palace is filled with worthless--”

Nikandros supposed that was something of a backhanded compliment. “If you put down your weapons,” said Nikandros, “I will wrestle you.”

He had surprised the Prince, he could see that on Laurent’s face. Laurent stepped to the side and set his practice sword on one of the racks on the wall.

Nikandros took three steps into the ring. He gestured toward the Prince’s leg. “That also.”

“I’m not taking my clothes off,” said Laurent, sounding acid.

“I meant the knife in your boot,” said Nikandros.

Laurent hesitated again. “I do not mean to use it against you,” he said. “But what if we are come upon unawares.”

There had been two minor skirmishes within the palace since they had taken it three days prior, so it was not an unreasonable fear. 

“Well,” said Nikandros. “If there are five or less of them, I think we can take them even without a knife. And if there are more than five, it is probably better for you to talk them to death.”

Laurent gave a startled gasp of laughter.

“Five without any weapons, you think?” he said, removing the knife from his boot and setting it off to the side. 

Nikandros moved the rest of the way into the ring. “That’s why we practice wrestling,” he said.


	2. Chapter 2

Damen and Laurent had been in agreement when Laurent had suggested the plan to combine all of their military forces together, Nikandros knew. He had been one of the generals to hear the plan from the two of them in the king’s bedroom, where Damen was still resting and recovering from the wound in his side. The plan had sounded very reasonable when the two of them had explained it, carefully first in Akielon and then in Veretian, giving each explanation equal length and weight. All of the generals had nodded agreement to the kings, and then the physicians had crowded in again to stop Damen from trying to sit up and to try to apply some sort of spiced salve to his wound. Damen’s sickbed smelled of a type of cookie that Nikandros’s grandmother had used to make when he was a child; visiting Damen made him hungry.

But it had all been well and good for Damen to be in favor of the plan in his bed, he was not out here on the field during drills. In some ways, this was a worse challenge than the tension between the Veretian and the Akielon camps on the way from Touars to Marlas. The Veretians then had been outnumbered, and well disciplined. Laurent might have ridden beside Damen with his banner at an equal height, but it hadn’t escaped any of the men in his company that there were twenty times as many Akielons as there were Veretians, and they did their work and kept their heads down. There had been a clear mission to their march, then, and the Akielons had been driven and inspired by the return of their king, and everyone had wanted to get to Ios. The sports and spectacles that were organized along the way had been the final binding of the camps together.

But there were more Veretians, now, the entire army that the Veretian Regent had sailed to the heart of Vere, and while they had accepted the death of their previous ruler and the assumption of the power by Laurent with relative equanimity, Nikandros could tell that there was some uncertainty amongst them. There were more Akielons, too, men who had served under Kastor who seemed guilty not of treason but only of ignorance. They had been living in an uneasy alliance with the Veretians in Ios for several weeks with poor discipline, and the tensions that had already formed between the two groups made it even more difficult to unite all of them now under new leadership.

To Laurent’s credit, he did not shirk any of the work. Damen wouldn’t have, either, but no one was letting him out of bed until Paschal gave permission, which Paschal said required him to, at minimum, not become dizzy when he walked across the room to relieve himself in the chamber pot. 

Laurent was not wounded, and he appeared in riding clothes at dawn every morning, directed the Veretian captains in a calm voice throughout the day, rode up and down the lines and corrected men who were out of formation or whose weaponry did not meet his expectations, and when the drills were not perfect, he calmly said, “Again.” Nikandros was beginning to hate the Veretian word “again.”

The third day was exceptionally hot. It was uncomfortably warm even when it was mid-morning, and three fights broke out even before the time that they would have stopped for the noon meal. 

Laurent decided that there was to be no noon meal, because, as he said, addressing the men from horseback, their performance that morning had not yet merited it. Nikandros regarded Laurent from his own horse, marveling that Laurent had to be wearing three times as much clothing as Nikandros was, and yet he did not seem to feel the heat. He looked cool and he spoke calmly. He spent a quarter of an hour dressing down the men, dispensing punishments to those who had been caught fighting, and then explaining that they would have a ten minutes break for water before they were to begin the morning’s exercises again. “It is important that you function as one company,” said Laurent, in conclusion.

Nikandros moved his horse to take a position beside Laurent. He nodded, as though he and Laurent had agreed on this plan in advance. “We are one now,” he said, quoting what Damen kept saying. “And as a demonstration of how Veretians and Akielons can work together, your King has announced that he will study wrestling in the Akielon fashion.”

Nikandros could see Laurent turn his head his direction out of the corner of his eye, but he kept his own face forward toward the men. He did not need to look over at Laurent to know that his gaze likely promised retribution.

Laurent also spoke as though he and Nikandros had agreed upon this plan in advance. “Your Kyros has volunteered to teach me personally.”

Nikandros lowered his voice. “Have I.”

Laurent spoke equally quietly. “You have.”

“Can we watch?” someone shouted. The voice sounded suspiciously like Lazar, and Laurent’s piercing glare shifted from Nikandros to the direction the voice had come from. 

Nikandros went further, raising his voice for the men again. “We will conduct our lessons at the same time you are doing drills,” he said. “That way all will be seen to be working together.”

Laurent nodded in front of the men, and then they broke ranks for the promised water break, and Laurent and his horse disappeared, and Nikandros assumed that Laurent had contrived some excuse. 

He had not. By the time the captains were reassembling the men after the break, Laurent had appeared again, now without his horse, and somehow in the intervening ten minutes he’d even arranged for a small wrestling ring to be set up. 

Nikandros rested one hand on the wooden post of the ring. “Your highness--” he searched for words to say that they didn’t really have to do this. 

Laurent raised an eyebrow. “I’m waiting for instruction.”

Nikandros decided that if he was going to be recruited as a wrestling instructor instead of overseeing the infantry drills, there was one advantage, and that was that he could take his clothes off in the blazing heat. Laurent watched as Nikandros shed his clothing and hung it over the wooden post, but made no move to disrobe. Nikandros hadn’t really expected him to; he would have been more surprised if Laurent had, and he smiled to himself for a moment, imagining it. 

He began by explaining the rules to Laurent, and then showing him the traditional starting positions, and explaining moves which were permitted and moves which were not permitted. 

Laurent nodded his understanding and occasionally asked a brief question.

They began to actually grapple with each other, and Nikandros pinned Laurent to the ground easily. He looked at Laurent flat on the ground under his arm. Of course, it was Laurent, so he said, “I suppose you like this.”

“Yes,” said Nikandros, and he offered Laurent a hand up. “Again,” he said in Akielon.

Laurent earned his respect that day. Nikandros lost count of the number of times he had pinned Laurent in the dust, and yet Laurent was persistent. He kept getting up. He listened to Nikandros’s instruction, he paid attention, and he applied what he learned. He was very good for a beginner.

The drills concluded in the middle of the afternoon, and the main question for most of the men was whether they planned to collapse in the first patch of shade that they came across, or if they would walk all the way down to the coast and wash in the ocean. Nikandros saw Pallas dragging a reluctant Lazar down to the water. Nikandros decided to take advantage of his status in the palace and go to the baths. He was covered in dirt from the wrestling, and his clothing was held in one hand; there didn’t seem to be much point in putting it on when he was so filthy.

After he’d washed, he went to check on Damen. There were a few moments in the hallway where he could hear the conversation from the king’s room before they could tell he approached. 

“You look tired. Is your shoulder bothering you?” said Damen. 

Nikandros stopped in the hall, wondering how Laurent would explain what they’d been doing. “It’s hot,” said Laurent. “I was doing drills with the men.” Then Laurent must have heard Nikandros’s footsteps, because he raised his voice. “Who’s there?”

Nikandros entered. Damen’s room still smelled of spice cookies. 

“How did the drills go today?” said Damen.

“They went well,” Nikandros said. 

“Yes,” said Laurent. “I think the troop is finally starting to feel a sense of unity.”


	3. Chapter 3

The prince was a keen student. In their first lesson together, he was quiet and attentive, watching closely and imitating exactly. In their second lesson together, he began to ask more questions, displaying more of the sharp manner that Nikandros was familiar with from council meetings or directing the troops. During their third lesson together, he began to show some creativity, testing moves and holds that Nikandros had not yet taught him. Nikandros thought that perhaps he had been watching some of the soldiers at wrestling practice, trying some of the things that they tried. Or perhaps he was simply guessing, trying to apply his knowledge of other sports to the mechanics of the body in this new realm.

If he had been a boy just beginning to learn the sport, Nikandros would have favored him as a promising pupil. As an adult, he was unlikely to ever rival the best wrestlers, but he was a quick learner.

After Laurent tried a creative approach to squirm out from under Nikandros—and failed, ending up on his back in the dirt again—Nikandros gave him some advice. “The move that you tried,” he said, gesturing. “When you were on your side.”

Laurent nodded his understanding.

“That is called ‘two dolphins’,” said Nikandros. “It is not a wrestling move.”

Laurent tilted his head to the side slightly. Nikandros had observed it was a gesture the prince used when he was curious. “Why does it have a name, if it is not a wrestling move?”

“It’s a sex position,” said Nikandros, and had the rare joy of seeing Laurent’s eyes widen slightly in surprise.

After a moment, Laurent’s mouth curved slightly. “I am not certain how you distinguish the two.”

Nikandros laughed. “Again,” he said, resuming the starting position.

Laurent did not attempt to use ‘two dolphins’ again—it hadn’t worked, after all, and the prince seemed adept at changing his strategy when his first attempt at something was not successful. But after several more minutes of practice, he said. “Akielons have names for sex positions?”

Did Damen truly become so foolish-headed around Laurent that they never talked in the bedroom? “Yes,” said Nikandros. “Not so in Vere?”

“Maybe a crude description,” said Laurent. “Nothing about fish.”

Laurent picked himself off the floor and resumed their starting position yet again. He was improving, Nikandros observed.

They reached the conclusion of their practice. Nikandros rubbed himself down with a towel and put his clothes back to rights. Laurent was lingering longer than he usually did in the practice space. Nikandros looked his direction and met Laurent’s gaze.

“Tell me more words for Akielon sex positions,” said Laurent.

Nikandros threw his towel into a straw basket that the slaves would gather later for the laundry. “I agreed to teach you wrestling, not sex,” he said. 

“We both have our clothes on,” said Laurent. “Think of it simply as a vocabulary lesson.”

Nikandros grunted. “I’ll give you a copy of the book. You can memorize all the words that you like.”

“The book?”

Nikandros had no idea what Damen was doing with this one in the bedroom. He’d not even heard of the book?

“There’s a famous book of—” Nikandros was not really sure how to describe it. “Of sex positions.”

Laurent seemed skeptical. “I have inspected all of the books in the royal library, and there was nothing like that.”

“It’s not really a book you keep in the library,” Nikandros said. He and Laurent were fetched by one of the squires, and their attention was distracted. Later, Nikandros had a fleeting moment of humor imagining the Veretian prince determinedly searching Damen’s rooms for some sort of book. Nikandros knew Damen had a copy of it somewhere—he and Damen had paged through it with wide eyes as young boys—but it was more amusing to imagine the prince’s search as fruitless.

The following day, he told himself he was taking pity on the prince, but truly he was protecting himself from further questions. He summoned Isander and asked him to wrap a copy of the book in paper and deliver it to the prince. Isander ran off obediently. 

When Nikandros went to check on Damen that afternoon, he found Damen’s wound healing well and his friend complaining of how sick he was of broth. Nikandros clapped him on the shoulder. “I am glad you are feeling better,” he said. “You owe me a favor, old friend.”

Damen seemed to think he was speaking of how Nikandros was running Ios while he was recovering. “You have been invaluable to me,” said Damen, but Nikandros cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Not that,” said Nikandros. Damen looked confused. “You’ll figure it out,” said Nikandros.


	4. Chapter 4

Later, when Nikandros had time to think, he realized that it was only coincidence he came into the library at that moment. He easily might not have gone to the library, and the whole encounter would have gone a different way.

If he had not entered the library, the man with the garrotte would not have been momentarily distracted, Laurent would likely have been overtaken, and it was hard to even imagine the political fallout. What would have happened when the Veretian troops were quartered in the Akielon capital and suddenly all of the members of Veretian royalty were dead? The ensuing civil war in Vere would have been reason enough to save Laurent, if Nikandros had had time to think that far ahead.

He did not have that much time to think. He entered the library on his coincidentally timed errand and was surprised by the sight of Laurent struggling with a man wearing a mask. The masked man looked up at Nikandros’s entrance, and Laurent used that opportunity to elbow him in the stomach, and by that point Nikandros had had time to react and he threw a knife and hit the masked man in the shoulder. Laurent managed to struggle away from the man as he recoiled, and Nikandros crossed the room while drawing his sword, despite the fact that there wasn’t really space in the library to use it effectively. 

They prevailed. 

Laurent escaped the wire garrotte with only cuts on his hands and a thin slice on his neck. The masked man used Nikandros’s knife to slit his own throat before they had an opportunity to ask him any questions. 

“Are you badly hurt?” Nikandros said to Laurent, turning his attention from the assassin bleeding out on the floor.

“No,” said Laurent, and he looked up from the assassin to meet Nikandros’s eyes, and they shared a moment of understanding for a single breath, and then, without speaking further, they both began running for the king’s rooms.

Their arrival in Damen’s chamber was anticlimactic. Pallas was standing guard outside the door to Damen’s chamber. He rapidly came to attention and drew his weapon as they arrived with theirs already in their hands. The three of them burst through the door to Damen’s room ready for a confrontation, only to find nothing. Damen was sleeping. Paschal was mixing a salve in the corner of the room and looked up at them from under his floppy hat. There was no one else present. 

“Search the room,” Nikandros told Pallas, and Pallas obediently checked any part of the room’s furniture that could potentially hide even a very small man or child, but there was nothing. 

Paschal observed the cuts on Laurent’s neck and hands and turned his attention from the salve to the prince. 

Nikandros sent Pallas back to his post with a warning to be extra alert. Laurent permitted Paschal to bandage him. When Paschal was done he had a white cloth wrapped around his neck to staunch the blood, and Paschal had tied it with a bow. Children in Akielos sometimes wore fancy bows tied around their necks for holidays, so Laurent looked a small child all dressed up for a festival. 

Paschal left for the evening, carrying his satchel.

Nikandros supposed he should leave also. There was nothing further for him to do in Damen’s rooms. Yet he hesitated. 

Laurent produced a bottle of liquor from somewhere, and there were two cups on a small table. He poured into one, and then held out the bottle toward Nikandros, asking. Nikandros nodded. Laurent poured into the second cup.

Laurent set the bottle down and picked up the cup closest to him. Nikandros took the other. He tasted it. The liquor was not a kind he recognized; it was sweet and not to his tastes. He drank it anyway. 

Laurent poured a second cup for himself. Nikandros declined.

Nikandros did have a suggestion for the prince, though. 

“If you are come upon from behind,” Nikandros said, “there is a wrestling move, to free yourself--” it was easier to show than to explain, and he gestured. Laurent set his cup down and moved behind Nikandros. Nikandros adjusted Laurent’s hold, and then demonstrated the escape.

Laurent nodded. 

“You try it,” Nikandros said. 

Laurent swallowed the rest of his second glass of liquor in one gulp before he moved back into position, this time in front of Nikandros. Nikandros kept his hold light in deference to the prince’s bandaged neck, and Laurent practiced the escape. 

“Yes, though shift your weight more to the left,” said Nikandros, and he made Laurent do it again.

After Laurent had performed the escape satisfactorily, he poured more liquor. Nikandros accepted having his glass refilled. 

Liquor loosened the prince’s tongue. First, Laurent speculated at length on how an assassin could have gotten into the palace. Nikandros tried to take this as a man confronting his fears after having almost died and not as a personal criticism of his leadership of the palace guard. Laurent might have meant it either way, or both ways. 

Then, Laurent moved on to the possible political motivations of an assassin. He’d clearly given much more thought to who wanted him dead than Nikandros had. Nikandros himself did not make the list of potential suspects, he noted, or if he was on Laurent’s mental list the prince was too cagey to admit that out loud to the man in question. Around the time Laurent poured himself a fifth cup, he was analyzing the style of clothing worn by the assassin for potential meaning.

Nikandros poured the next round.

“Are there more moves like the one you taught me?” said Laurent. The two of them had sat down on the settee in Damen’s room somewhere around the third cup. Laurent’s posture on the settee had become progressively more casual, and now he had his feet up on the seat and was leaning against the back cushion with his head propped on his hand.

“You must learn wrestling,” Nikandros told him. 

“You must teach me,” Laurent replied, sounding equally earnest, and they toasted the notion with the sixth round.

***

Nikandros awoke feeling hungover and confused. The light was wrong, so he wasn’t in his own room. He could hear Damen snoring. He was lying next to someone; there was someone warm who smelled nice curled in front of him. Nikandros blinked his eyes open to a face full of yellow hair, and then he widened his eyes further. The liquor bottle on the small table next to the settee was empty, and one of their cups had tipped over. Nikandros removed his hand from where it rested on Laurent’s hip and tried to delicately edge off of the settee without waking the prince.

He was not successful. In the process of trying to climb out from between the back of the settee and Laurent’s body, the prince also blinked awake.

Nikandros watched Laurent’s eyes recognize him, widen, and then flick from Nikandros to the bed where Damen was still snoring, and then over to the empty bottle.

“I’m going to go talk to the palace guard,” said Nikandros, standing up.

Laurent nodded, and Nikandros made his escape.

**Author's Note:**

> [all of the author's Captive Prince fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=kudos_count&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=0&fandom_id=3516977&user_id=Josselin), [come talk about Captive Prince with me on tumblr](http://josselinkohl.tumblr.com/)


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